"Since you are here supply me with some paradoxes." "I have not any about me," said Rodolphe, "though I can lend you some.
Only they are not mine, I bought them for half a franc from one of my friends who was in distress.

They have seen very little use as yet." "Very good," said the critic.
"Ah!" said Rodolphe to himself, setting to write again.

"I shall certainly ask him for ten francs, just now paradoxes are as dear as partridges." And he wrote some thirty lines containing nonsense about pianos, goldfish and Rhine wine, which was called toilet wine just as we speak of toilet vinegar.
"It is very good," said the critic.

"Now do me the favor to add that the place where one meets more honest folk than anywhere else is the galleys." "Why ?" "To fill a couple of lines.

Good, now it is finished," said the influential critic, summoning his servant to take the article to the printers.
"And now," thought Rodolphe, "let us strike home." And he gravely proposed his request.
"Ah! my dear fellow," said the critic, "I have not a sou in the place.
Lolette ruins me in pommade, and just now she stripped me of my last copper to go to Versailles and see the Nereids and the brazen monsters spout forth the floods." "To Versailles.